An ode to the troubles of Humanities and Social Sciences students on the way of Digital Humanities (and Social Sciences?)
I shall pass by the question of differences between humanities and social sciences as mutually not that exclusive but methodologically variable disciplines and directly get into the question of absences. Why is it Digital Humanities, but not Digital Humanities and Social Sciences? Or rather, will social sciences as a term emerge separately through different methodologies adopted in the field? Shall we have expectations? These questions occurred to me when I saw my colleague creating accounts on dating apps, mentioning the fact that she is a researcher and approaching other users for interviews on their usage of these apps. The data I used to associate with the humanities part in Digital Humanities was the ‘data that is there to digitalize’ may it be from the discipline of history, philosophy, literature and the list goes on leaning more towards the textual or digital data which survive. When I state myself being from the Humanities and Social Sciences discipline with the emphasis on Humanities as I am more into philosophy, then this assumption gained more and more strength. Going back to my colleague who is not a dating app user, as a researcher!, the collection in data through online means in a completely digitalized setting puzzled me and now I wonder when did we have the cut after the title Digital Humanities? I commentary that I got as I was planning this post was that Humanities and Social Sciences are not separate and Social Sciences is not excluded from Digital Humanities. I would like to encourage this approach. Yet, I believe is important to pay attention to the times and circumstances in which we make the cuts or exclusions in titles of the freshly emerging disciplines. It surely should be considered crucial to look at the nature, the method, the target of data we are dealing with to find the middle ground and the missing or not fitting (due to the size, perhaps) ‘Social Sciences’ as there may arise instances when two individuals come together from the disciplines (or might be departments in some educational settings) and identify themselves with ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’ or ‘Digital Humanities’ and we are taken aback by the similarities in their way of collecting and approaching their data. Now again the question stands still, where is ‘Social Sciences’? Shall we wait for it? Do we need this addition or are we good with only Digital Humanities and the Social Sciences go without saying?
Winter Institute in Digital Humanities 